[Holly Hock]

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[attr="class","RDcontainer"] [attr="class","RDcontent"] Holly should honestly just stop picking this up the ground.[break] [break] She had found a flyer when she was walking in the streets. It was discarded on the ground and it had some stains of some undiscernible source on it. It was an advertisement for a place called ‘Sunrise Beach’. It was the best new tourist attraction/Beach holiday destination on Lake Matsu. It had fun activities, great food, Huntsmen protection, and it promised an unforgettable get-away experience! It all sounded too good to be true![break] [break] Trusting this piece of paper without doing any more research into the topic, Holly decided what she wanted to do for her holiday. She couldn’t go home during the summer break. The trader who visited Mato-Mato regularly didn’t come back one day to Mistral. He most likely got attacked. This worried Holly, a lot, but she couldn’t exactly do anything about it at the moment. There wasn’t a bounty to recover the ship, nor did anyone seem to mind if a little island didn’t get visited anymore. Holly wanted to visit home, but she couldn’t as of this moment. So, she went to this Sunrise Beach. Beaches might remind her as much of home as possible in Mistral. [break] [break] The problem was that none of her friends was available to go. Kishka was on a holiday with her family, things were still weird with Carmim. Bianca was…not the kind of person Holly would go on a holiday with. Ryan was…No. Rose was not available, or well…Holly didn’t get to ask her before she got someone proposing she would join Holly. It was Nina. The blind girl with sharp teeth.[break] [break] Well, not blind. She had eyes, and Holly knew that she could see something. But it was like, really bad. Holly didn’t know why they had a near-blind girl at the academy. Somehow, she had heard that Holly was looking for people to go with her to Sunrise Beach. Holly didn’t really know this girl that well, but she was like…super stoked about going to a beach. Holly thought it was a gamble, but perhaps this Nina would be a potential new friend. After way too little planning from Holly’s part, the two of them set off. There wasn’t a direct transport towards Sunrise Beach. The two of them took an airship to a nearby settlement and needed to travel through the wilderness for a day. [break] [break] No direct access to the beach or the lack of tourists should have been the first major worry.[break] [break] The weird looks the people in the settlement gave them when they asked for directions should have been the second one. [break] [break] Holly was chipper during the hike through the wilds of Mistral. It was honestly quite an uneventful journey. No attacks from Grimm. No other travellers.[break] [break] When the two of them arrived at Sunrise Beach, a lot of earlier red flags that Holly missed became unmistakable. [break] [break] There was nothing more than a ruined lakeside settlement left, without a soul within sight. [break] [break] Sunrise Beach had been abandoned around six years ago after a Grimm attack. Everybody knew that. They called it the Summer Resort Lancer Massacre. A stupid name all things considered. Most of the tourists and residents could be evacuated. Body count hadn’t even left the single digits. All things considered; it was most likely not the best place to house tourists in the first place. It used to be a fishing village that got more and more traffic when Mistral became crowded. Close enough to not be considered too outlandish, far enough to escape the city. It became a place for people to visit the lake. While the Huntsmen had kept it save for a few years, and it got decent traffic, the place was never truly safe. Lancers had troubled the settlement when it was but a fishing village. It only increased when more people came. Eventually, all of it fell apart like so many settlements do.[break] [break] And Holly had come here on a hunch after she had found a flyer that was at least six years out of date.[break] [break] So, there the two of them now stood. At the entrance of a derelict fishing village turned tourist trap, turned abandoned ruined ghost town. There was a slope downwards from where the two girls stood, and they could look at the lake and the beach from there. There were a few houses scattered overlooking the water, and two larger buildings closer to the beach. All of the doors were open, and there was trash and Holly was 90% certain she could see a skeleton of some animal laying on the middle of the road not too far from them. The place had an eerie silence hanging over it. [break] [break] The pinkette had travelled relatively light, only having a medium-sized backpack on her pack back. It was in the shape of a pink kitty head. She had her weapon with her, of course. She glanced at Nina for a moment, being the first to break the silence after the two got to behold the sight of the ruined settlement in front of them. [break] [break] “So…I don’t think the beach will be very crowded… I also don’t think we will need to pay for our rooms. All things considered; I think there is a….” Holly held up her fingers, before she started to count on them. “High chance we will need to defend whatever sandcastle we built with our lives.” She lowered her hands again, seeming to drop the act of trying to salvage this horrible holiday destination choice. “We are going in, or are we going to return back?”

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[attr="class","RDwortag"] Words: 932, Thread Total: 932	[attr="class","RDwortag"] Aura: 100%
[attr="class","RDnotes"] Semblance: C, Wildflower: E, Survival: F, Gardening: F, Scroll-usage: F, Martial Arts: F, Healing: E, Acrobatics: F, Stamina: E

[attr="class","trinCredits"]TABLE BY TRINITY @ ADOXOGRAPHY

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[Nina Rivers]

NINA RIVERS

---

Hark now, hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,

---

Sunrise Beach.

Nina had absolutely no clue what that was all about, really- Holly had told her it was some really cool tourist spot near Lake Matsu, with a bunch of fun attractions and stuff. Basically a super-safe way to enjoy the beach! Which was kinda neat, she figured. Not that safety was a super-big concern for her; she hadn't really ever been safe any time in her life, as far as she could tell, except for maybe now, at Haven.

Which meant it was probably time for a less-than-safe adventure again!

But this would probably not be that, the way Holly was describing it. And she trusted Holly's intuition on this matter, because she smelled like dirt and her hair was bright pink, so Nina could pick her out of a crowd pretty easily, even with her poor eyesight. Plus, anyone who smells like dirt probably does really cool stuff, like digging holes, or mudwrestling tigers, or planting pumpkins or something, so she was essentially a trustworthy person of strong moral character.

Regardless of some really weird rumors she'd heard about her new friend, Dirt Girl, AKA Holly.

She made a mental note to not call her Dirt Girl, because she could see how that might be taken as an insult, even though it basically never should be, and in fact, it's a terrible insult. Way closer to a badass superhero name than an insult, actually! It's a compliment of the highest order! Dirt Girl and Ocean Lass, on the case again!

The case being Lake Matsu, and again being a thing that isn't true, because they had never really hung out before this.

She heard from someone that Holly was looking for a travel buddy, and it involved a lake, so of course, she was in. The Academy's pool was pretty cool, but nothing beat actual real water. Not to say that the pool water was fake water, but you know... It's not really real, like how lake water is.

Luckily for her, Holly was pretty amiable to the idea of her tagging along, so they set out on an airship, then made their way through the wilderness in search of a settlement, which was easy enough for Nina- she'd spent a pretty good percentage of her life in the wilderness, in fact, so this was more nostalgic than anything, honestly.

Also nostalgic for Nina was expecting people to be somewhere., and then those people not being there, except in this case, there was a lot less disappointment than there usually was! Heck yeah!

And there was also nostalgia, when they got to where they were going, in the sense that she definitely had seen some pretty ghostly ghost towns in her time. Wait. No, that's not nostalgia, that's just recognizing a ghost town when she sees (slash, smells) one. Huh. "This the right place, yeah?" She scratched her head, double-checking the little hand-drawn map she'd made with some of the settlements' residents' directions. Which meant a lot of holding the paper up to her face and squinting a bunch while Holly looked around at everything.

Holly looked over at her, and Nina shrugged her well-worn hiking backpack back onto her shoulder, leaning against her trident, which was currently poking into the ground as she listened to the pinkette.

Hmm...

Well, it was a pretty easy decision from where she was standing. "We made it this far, yeah? Maybe it'll still be pretty fun! We got the whole place to ourselves, at least, yeah?" She grinned, shark-like teeth spread wide, as she put away the map and set about familiarizing herself with their surroundings a little better.

"I'm all for some high-stakes sandcastle defense if you are. It will be our little sand fortress! Fantastico! The best sand castle." Hmm... Maybe they should pick out some lodging first? The blue-haired faunus personally wouldn't have minded just roughing it on the lakeside, but since there were so many available abandoned buildings, they might as well take their pick and sleep a little more comfortably.

Probably not in a house, though- that would feel kinda... weird. Sleeping where some poor family had to leave all their stuff behind to evacuate. Nah, she set her sights on what looked like an old bait shop, heading in that direction, and glancing back to Holly to see if she was going to follow.

"Wanna make camp first? Or d'ya just wanna go explore the lake some first? I'm down for whatever!"

This was going to be a fun vacation!

She was sure of it!

...As sure as she was that the faint buzzing way off in the distance, across the lake, was just a figment of her imagination or something. Definitely nothing ominous that they would surely have to deal with later... Probably, anyways!

Just good clean fun, at the beach!

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Let your soul and spirit fly,
Into the mystic.

---

808 words | 808 total words | ADVENTURE!

♥

[Holly Hock]

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[attr="class","RDcontainer"] [attr="class","RDcontent"] Holly perked up when Nina didn't just ditch Holly there and then. She had fully expected this to be a possibility after they discovered the state of the resort. Looking out at all of that possibility laying before them, her eyes sparkled for a moment. A town with nobody in it but themselves? "...A whole town just for the two of us?! Do...do you think they left some good stuff behind? Or...wait...WAIT!" There was most likely something ethically wrong about scavenging a town in which people died not a decade ago, but at this moment Holly had only one idea on her mind. "If you sit in the chair of the mayor, you become the mayor! We got to find wherever that place is when we explore! I always wanted to hold public office!" [break] [break] This crazy idea was put into Holly's head when she tried to watch a political drama once. She started at episode 7 because there would be at least 6 episode of establishing characters and dynamics that was most likely boring. In the one episode she watched, Chester Elderwood was trying to become the mayor of Argus after the previous one died or something. Holly missed that part, of course. He got into the mayor's office and sat down on his chair while looking out of the window. The previous mayor's assistant walked into the room when it happened, and freaked the fuck out that Elderwood was in the chair. He turned around to face her, there was a close-up, and he proclaimed all awesome-like: 'In all but name, I am the mayor! You better get used to getting my coffee black.'[break] [break] Which was maybe a bit stupid, because all coffee was black, right? [break] [break] But that image about how politics should work stuck with Holly. Find the chair, proclaim you are the mayor, and you become the mayor. Bingo Bongo.[break] [break] Holly was following Nina when she took the lead, her eyes still sparkling at the idea of leading a defunct lakeside ghost town. Holly actually started to gain on Nina when she saw that there was a place that looked to have sold fishing equipment in the past. Despite having been a fish out of water, people did fish on her island and this was one of the things she sort of recognized. Seeming to be full of optimize, she started to see things on the bright side. Which for her, meant twisting reality even more. [break] [break] "Last time on Megarobodino-Huntresses-Z, our two heroes began exploring the ruins of Sunrise Beach to have fun and find the throne of public office!" Holly exclaimed as if she was an announcer of a cartoon. "They discovered an abandoned bait shop and decided to make camp first, but even they couldn't possibly predict what secrets they discovered on their holiday vacation! The exciting adventure continues!" [break] [break] When Holly was done with her little speech, she would have reached the fishing store, which was crudely named 'Jailbait Fishing'. The logo was a fish behind bars with a sad expression. To Holly and most likely the owner, the not so secret meaning of that term seemed to be missing as Holly thought nothing of it. Honestly, the name predated the internet with how long the town has been abandoned and there wasn't even service out here. So... fish in jail, neat! [break] [break] The girl tried the door, which was locked. Holly didn't so much thought she was breaking and entering at this moment when she turned around to face Nina. "This place doesn't seem to have been looted! All of the goodies are for us!" Seeming to have adopted to the mentality of a post-apocalyptic scavenger at the drop of a hat, Holly took her weapon in her hand and sliced through the side where the lock was. The lock, as well as the door, didn't gave much resistance. Holly placed her hand against the door, and it flung open without a problem...mostly because Holly had cut out a large part of the wooden door with her stunt.[break] [break] Being a gentle-hock and a scholar, she held open the door for Nina to enter first. "After you, my explorer-buddy! You have dips on the first cool thing you find!" All the same for entering the building first and maybe triggering a trap or whatever. This was honestly just that Holly needed. A fun adventure in the summer with someone who didn't really knew her all that much! No past traumatic moments, no Ryan in sight to affect her mood, and nobody she could potentially endanger! While...potentially Nina, but she was a hardy Faunus and still at this point kinda irrelevant at this point as far as emotional development goes! Holly had to work on that bond-level some more! Grind that relationship for added bonuses and buffs in team battles! [break] [break] Holly was taking this vacation maybe a little too much as an excuse for escapism, but she honestly deserved it.

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[attr="class","RDwortag"] Words: 803, Thread Total: 1735	[attr="class","RDwortag"] Aura: 100%
[attr="class","RDnotes"] Semblance: C, Slicer: F, Survival: F, Gardening: F, Scroll-usage: F, Martial Arts: F, Healing: E, Acrobatics: F, Stamina: F

[attr="class","trinCredits"]TABLE BY TRINITY @ ADOXOGRAPHY

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Colour: E08ED3

[Nina Rivers]

NINA RIVERS

---

Hark now, hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,

---

Nina cracked a grin as Holly seemed to be pretty receptive to the idea of staying.

Which was great!

Nina was still pretty stoked about the little ghost town, even if it wasn't exactly what they were expecting. It was all part of adventuring, right? Which was at least half of what being a Huntsman was supposed to be all about. And at the very least, it couldn't be much riskier than any of her other adventures, most of which didn't have the luxury of being accompanied by a friend with a sawblade on her arm.

She listened enthusiastically as Holly explained her mayoral ambitions, which were enough to get Nina pumped up, even more than she already was. "Yeah! Yeah, that's the spirit! I'll be your uh... merda, what's it called... Vice mayor! That's a thing, yeah?" There had to be a vice mayor- it was so lonely at the top, how could anyone ever be mayor all alone?

She started walking forward, following the smell of fish and old dirt to the bait shack when Holly's approached grabbed her attention again, drawn by the scent of dirt and plants coming nearer to her. It was a pretty nice smell- bits of flowers and fruit in there too. Definitely a lot of dirt, though. Not that Nina minded exactly- she lived in dirt for most of her life, and she swam in swamps for fun.

Her grin broadened further at the Saturday morning cartoon spiel Holly gave. It was fun and totally fitting! They were 100% the Megarobodino Huntresses-Z. That was badass. She had to stop and think about why exactly they were mega, or robo, or dino for that matter, but she was sure it totally made sense, in the context of the show. Maybe they could fusion dance together to turn into a huge robot stegosaurus or something, so they could have super cool kaiju battles with giant Grimm, or rogue Huntresses who'd gone AWOL, with super crazy awesome semblances and flamethrower hands.

Heh.

That actually reminded her of someone she hadn't thought of in a very long time. If anyone was going to be fighting a Megarobodino Huntress-Z transformer super-mecha, though, it would absolutely be her! Flashy white fire and all- it was the coolest fucking thing she'd seen at the time, and frankly, it was still pretty damn cool, thinking back on it.

What was her name again...

She knew she hadn't forgot it- not even after all those years, she was Sinopia's big sister, slash best friend, and that was someone she definitely couldn't forget. She was just really bad with names.

Aliyah? Alaina? Aliza... Uhh...

"Alina!"

She was pretty sure Holly was cool and chill enough to not acknowledge her randomly blurting out names of old friends for no explicable reason. She hoped so, because she felt like giving enough context for that to make any sense at all would take her far longer than just trying to pass it off as a really weird sneeze.

Still, she was glad she hadn't forgotten her friend's name- that would be kinda shitty, especially after all the times they'd shared, back in Menagerie. Granted, she'd spent much of that time existing tangentially to the wolf faunus- between the little age gap, and Alina's guard duty, she didn't have nearly as much time to hang out with her as she did with Sinopia, since they were about the same age, in the same class at the school, and she'd met her first.

Still, it brought a warm smile to her face, remembering her friends. She wondered how they were doing...

Not for long, though; they had already reached the presumably quite famous Jailbait Fishing bait shop, and Holly had finished her rousing narrator speech. "Onwards, Super-Megarobodinomecha-Huntress-Z Brigade! Onward!" She laughed as she attempted her very best imitation of a big muscly meathead hero's rallying call.

This was a fun start to their vacation already!

Nina didn't especially think too much of Holly's lack of aversion to looting someone's abandoned place of business, largely because she also lacked that sort of aversion, having grown up rough in Vacuo- if it didn't have an owner, and nobody was claiming it, it was yours for the taking. And she doubted the owner would be coming back any time soon.

"Hey, nice! Think there's anything good in here?"

She stepped back as Holly sawed the door down, filling the air with the scent of wood chips and hot metal. Not that she was worried about how cavalier Holly was with her weapon or anything- she just wasn't too interested in getting splinters, or sawblades, in her eye.

Though she immediately stepped back towards the shop again as her lovely polite companion held the door for her, to which she responded with an exaggerated bow and a wide toothy grin. "Oh, why grazi, signora! Here's hopin' we find two cool things, yeah? One for each of us!" Or maybe more! Like... Four cool things!

...

It didn't seem like there were a whole ton of cool things in the bait shop. It was, after all, a bait shop- most of the little bait fish had shriveled up and died a long time ago, and the worms and crickets had wriggled free of their confinement and made a break for it, as the earth began to reclaim the old wooden shack.

She did, however, spy an especially nifty looking old rod hanging behind the front counter- she gave a little sniff to make sure nothing was sneaking around behind the register, before climbing over and grabbing it from the wall.

Had a nice, sturdy, build to it... Felt like some kind of fancy fiberglass or something, with a little reel-assist on it. Way too fancy for her tastes, but it sure beat the hell out of making her own! She beamed back at Holly, holding up her prize. "Check this out, amica! We're eating good tonight!"

Hmm...

Actually, on second thought, she figured there was probably some cash in the register she'd passed over to grab the rod... That probably would have made for a much better bit of loot, long-term... But now it was Holly's turn! So she'd get first pick of the rest of the stuff, as Nina watched in excitement to see what prize the pinkette picked out next.

It was an unconventional summer getaway... But it was a fun one!

---

Let your soul and spirit fly,
Into the mystic.

---

1077 words | 1885 total words | It's not stealing if they died in a tragedy!

♥

[Holly Hock]

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[attr="class","RDcontainer"] [attr="class","RDcontent"] Vice-mayor, huh? Holly had no idea if it was an actual position in government, but they could always just make it one. That was one of the things that mayors do, don’t they? Decide the rules about such things? Any town could use a vice-mayor, and Nina seemed to be up for the task. Considering that she was well, alive, and not death. Breathing and moving are great qualifications for any job even if they don’t advertise them as required skills! [break] [break] Even more speaking for her potential, she seemed to be on board with the plan of looting this town and have fun with this situation! Great! Some people were really boring when it came to Holly’s plans. They were either ‘silly’, or ‘impractical’, or even sillier words like ‘unethical’ or ‘illegal’. Not that looting an abandoned town should be all that worrisome. With the amount of ghost towns the world must have, there would most likely be little wrong with all of this.[break] [break] Nina started to say some random name all of a sudden. At least Holly thought it was a name. Could be some word in another language. Maybe it was Nina’s word for bathroom? That she needed to go take a number 2 on the Alina? Was it different to go to the toilet in a ghost town? They could honestly just go to any bathroom they wanted, use it once, and go to another for as long as they were there. Who was going to blame them if they didn’t flush? [break] [break] Nah, that was gross.[break] [break] And Alina could mean anything really. Being at least somewhat interested in the matter, Holly asked her new scavenger buddy about it. “So, is Alina a thing or is it a person? You know a different language, not? Or is it an accent? I do not really know. Language is weird.”[break] [break] Holly at this moment wasn’t thinking really about her friends. They weren’t here right now, and she was getting more and more content with the thought that friends were overrated. They existed and they were nice, but if you placed all your eggs in the friendship basket, you are going to be in trouble when some goblin steals that basket. She wasn’t going to be some emo loner girl who said she didn’t need friendship or help. That was like, cartoon villainy. She just didn’t want to depend on it to do her own thing. Good to have it, not required to do your thing. She could be friends now with Nina, and would help to move a couch or something, but wouldn’t go on a dangerous mission that could end her life to get her 6 magic gems or something like that.[break] [break] Unless those magic gems gave Holly magic powers, or something.[break] [break] That would be nice.[break] [break] Holly shrugged slightly at the idea of there being any ‘good’ loot in this place. Maybe? Holly didn’t really know if a baitshop was a good place for S-tier drops. Maybe further in the town where the danger was greater? Or maybe it was inside of some kind of chest or vault they needed to have the proper skills for to open? That or there would be a key around. Maybe they would find a note with a hint where this key would be? All would be helpful enough?[break] [break] Honestly, in a way real life seemed like a video game if you explain it like that. [break] [break] Going in on that line of thinking, Holly asked her shark friend another question right after she busted open the door and allowed Nina to enter. “Hmm, If level 20 were like, the highest level you could be as a person, what would you give yourself? Do you think we are above level 10 already? Think video game logic? Do you think you are close to peeking, or are you like… still becoming a lot stronger?”[break] [break] Hmm, needed to put a p.s. on that one. “Also, the name is Holly Hock. Not Signora.” Weird mix up, but no biggie. [break] [break] The baitstore was honestly quite a bust. Holly searched around the fishing supplies on the shelves and on display, but none of that really grabbed her interest all that much. Nina seemed to find something good in the store area though, so that meant that she got the good loot drop in this dungeon room already. “Check the cash register. I am going to the backroom and see if the loot table is kind to me. I am a good girl, so karma should have my back.” …sure, said the cold uncaring world.[break] [break] As such, Holly went to the back of the shop towards the tiny office/breakroom/filing room/place where the owner must have cried himself to sleep as he invested all of his money into a baitshop that didn’t ran very well and how was most likely going to lose it in the divorce because Corral was a nasty bitch with a new fancy lawyer as a boyfriend.[break] [break] Very multipurpose. [break] [break] Holly looked around and honestly saw a perfect little something for her to take. [break] [break] The pinkette walked out of the backroom again to find Nina. Around her hips was a holster with a rather oversized revolver inside of it. Like, way too large calibre to be practical. The kind you buy if you were a desperate baitshop owner who still needed to buy something to prove that he was a manly man in control of his own life despite several bad life decisions, but didn’t had the money to get a motorcycle. She placed her feet on the ground and spitted on the floor. Not really all that great and with flair mind you. She put on the pair of sunglasses that she found on the ground. One of the glasses was cracked and it looked rather silly on her. She put on her bestest Cliff Beechwood) impression. “This town has gotten a new sheriff with a big iron on her hip, and she is not going to make a slip. Wild Hog. Yes, she is both the mayor and the sheriff, having a gross abuse of power but who are you going to complain to? SHE IS THE LAW!” [break] [break] Cliff Beechwood. The famous cowboy actor who was a literal cow Faunus, making it highly racial insensitive if you think about it. Holly saw like one movie he was in, and thought he was pretty cool. She wanted to be a cowboy after that, for like…an hour? Time to live her long lost dream she had in her youth.[break] [break] Well, 3 months ago.[break] [break] “Look out there vice-mayor, there is a rattlesnake!” Holly spoke with her horrible impression, attempting to quickdraw her weapon. In doing so, it became all too clear that she was not a girl for firearms. The weapon misfired as her finger got around the trigger too soon.[break] [break] BANG[break] [break] She shot a bullet into the floorboards. She also kinda freaked out because she didn’t anticipate that much kickback and the revolver being that loud. “DAMN THAT WAS LOUD!” She shouted, her ears ringing slightly. She went to pick up the gun as she gave a slight affirmation towards Nina that giving Holly a gun was maybe not the smartest of choices. “I will be careful, but I am keeping it. If this town has a sheriff’s hat somewhere, I got dips on it. You got some money? Want to pick out the next place to loot? Transferring party leadership to you now.” Holly put her revolver away and walked over towards Nina, giving her if allowed a boop on the forehead. “And transferred. NPC Holly made engaged! The bandits are coming!”[break] [break] Someone should tell her this was not really a video-game, but real life.[break] [break] Considering that if there was something still lurking in this town, they definitely heard that loud as heck gunshot.

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[attr="class","RDwortag"] Words: 1307, Thread Total: 3042	[attr="class","RDwortag"] Aura: 100%
[attr="class","RDnotes"] Semblance: B, Strangler: E, Gardening: D, Scroll-usage: F, Martial Arts: E, Healing: E, Acrobatics: F, Stamina: E, Greensense F

[attr="class","trinCredits"]TABLE BY TRINITY @ ADOXOGRAPHY

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Colour: E08ED3

[Nina Rivers]

NINA RIVERS

---

Hark now, hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,

---

Nina was pretty accustomed to rambling to herself, so much so that sometimes she wasn't entirely certain whether or not she was doing the rambling out loud, or in her head.

In this case, it seemed she had been rambling out loud. "Ehh...? Oh, yeah, haha. It's a person. Maybe it means something in another language too, though. Some names are weird like that, yeah? Old friend, though! She was pretty cool. Met her back on Menagerie." She smiled, thinking back fondly on the memories.

Menagerie wasn't great, by any means, but the people she met there were. And she missed them. Maybe she'd write home, someday, when she and Holly got bored playing around in a ghost town, and went back to civilization...

She was pulled from her thoughts of the tiny tropical island by a much more pressing line of thought, which gave the shark girl pause, as she stopped to contemplate Holly's question.

Video game logic?

She could definitely work with that. She was, after all, a pretty avid gamer, though RPGs weren't exactly her poison of choice.

Mostly because they were filled with spooky skeletons that would literally actually poison you! And she just didn't care much for the effort involved in grinding up so you could beat them up with a stealth archer build from thirty feet away.

She was much more into games where the enemies were spooky skeletons that could poison you, and you put in countless hours of grinding to level up your favorite heroes so they could beat them up with really flashy animated ultimate move sequences!

Hopefully she could still get service out here, actually- she wasn't too keen on breaking her login streak for RGO.

She was so close to hitting Bond 10 with Colton Deraine...

Just needed a little more grinding.

"Huh... Good question... If level 20's the top, then... I dunno, I guess I'd say I'm... maybe at like, level 11 as a person? Like, not halfway there, obviously, because y'know, games like that have exponential experience curves, so getting from level 1 to level 10 is like, the same amount of work from level 10 to 11, kinda, yeah? Though if we're just talking, like, Huntress-y stuff, like if this was a really combat-heavy game, then I'm probably like, level 10 maybe. Maybe lower. I'd probably die if we got jumped by a boss fight main antag villain too early."

It was an interesting train of thought, and she rambled on about it, regardless of whether or not Holly seemed to be paying much attention to her answer, because she thought it was interesting. Hopefully Holly thought it was interesting too, because now it was her turn. "What about you? How high level do you think you are?" She didn't actually acknowledge Holly's weird correction of her name, mostly because she was so used to people not understanding her little sprinkles of islander slang, that it didn't actually faze her anymore when someone thought she was saying something weird.

Most people didn't care for the explanations anyways- it was easier just to skip past it, and move on, though she made a note to not refer to Holly with any of her islander dialect anymore.

Actually, wait, wasn't Holly from an island too?

Obviously, not the same island, but Nina figured maybe she had some weird language quirks as well. She'd have to bring that up sometime, maybe. Maybe Holly just never used any of her native dialect, because she figured she'd get weird looks or something.

Not that Nina could see why that would discourage her- Holly was already a pretty weird girl, anyways, so if anything, saying a bunch of words nobody else understood would be kind of on-brand for her.

"Aye aye, cap'n!" She wasn't exactly sure why she reacted to Holly's orders to check the register in such a pirate-y way. It felt fitting. She had no idea what they were attempting to be anymore, actually- municipal elected leaders, super sentai action heroes, RPG protagonists... and now pirates, maybe.

Either way, as Holly disappeared down the hall, Nina ambled towards the counter, shiny new fishing rod in tow, and popped open the cash register, after finding the little button.

The loot table was as kind to her as it could be, considering this was a bait shop, and not a bank.

She found a solid 40 Lien in assorted bills and change, which she pocketed to split with the rest of the adventuring party of two later.

Which could be soon, considering Holly seemed to have finished exploring the rest of the bait shop. Nina turned to tell her about the cash she'd found, but didn't have a chance, as she was struck tongue-tied and stunned by the pinkette's sheer swagger.

Which, of course, Nina couldn't really make out too well, given her poor eyesight.

But it looked like Holly was stomping her way back into the storefront, before taking a moment to spit something out. Maybe she'd ate something old and gross back there? Nina couldn't imagine why she would think any of the food they might find here would still be edible, but she didn't think it was her place to tell Holly what she could, and couldn't, stick in her mouth, honestly.

The speech was a nice touch, though, and definitely distracted from the fact that Holly was probably going to be suffering soon, thanks to a horrible bout of food poisoning, from eating expired fish or something.

She was a little concerned, though, because the speech was muddied a bit by the fact that Holly sounded like she was already in pain, or like, maybe severely constipated or something. It was concerning, but Nina would wait and see where she was going with i-

A rattlesnake?

She turned around, pretty nonchalantly, because she had her Aura activated, for one thing, and she was also familiar enough with basic biology to remember that rattlesnakes aren't actually especially aggressive, unless mishandled or stepped on.

And frankly, she would bite someone who stepped on her, too, so she could relate to the noisy snake's plight.

Or she would have, if there was a snake- she couldn't see, nor smell, one, though she did smell a whole lot of gunpowder, as Holly fired off a huge shot from a massive pistol, causing her to clutch her ears, and jump at the startling noise, before turning back to the pink-haired sheriff, with an expression of surprise.

"Huh?" She shouted over the pounding in her head, before her hearing faded back in, and she caught the gist of what Holly was saying.

Luckily, she figured Holly was more a danger to herself with that gun, than she was to her, so Nina wasn't too worried about getting accidentally shot or anything. Besides, it seemed like Holly was having fun with her cowboy cosplay, and as long as she wasn't actually going around shooting at people, it was pretty harmless fun. Nina was tough, she could handle herself if Holly did decide to randomly shoot at her- if nothing else, she'd jump in the lake and swim away, then hike back to society on her own.

Not that she was too worried about that.

Holly seemed like a pretty sensible girl, even if she was maybe a few eggs short of a cake.

A finger reached up to jab her in the forehead, which she accepted readily, as she assumed the role of party leader. She wasn't sure if that also meant she was now the mayor-sheriff, but she assumed not, because Holly still had the gun, and was searching for the hat to match it.

Which meant there was only one place to go!

"Party leadership successfully transferred! Quick, NPC Sheriff Holly, we've gotta get out of here before the bandits come back! Let's find the sheriff station- I bet we'll find your hat there, and maybe like, some other cool sheriff stuff. If this town's even got a sheriff station, I mean. It probably does, yeah? Where else would the sheriff work?" Made sense to her.

The tricky part, though, was that Nina couldn't really sniff out a sheriff station the same way she could sniff out a bait shop.

So instead, in classic Nina fashion, she just picked a random direction, and started heading towards it, dramatically peeking to her left and right as she walked, in case those dastardly bastardly bandits showed up unexpected.

Or maybe even something worse...

---

Let your soul and spirit fly,
Into the mystic.

---

1424 words | 3309 total words | PEW PEW BANG BANG BANG BLAM BLAM

♥

[Jay]

XP Distribution:

Holly Hock: 30 XP
975 + 30 = 1075 XP Total

CORRECTED: 1005 XP total

Nina Rivers: 33 XP
293 + 33 = 323 XP Total